THE GENIUS OF JIMI … IN HIS 20 GREATEST SONGS
Machine Gun
(Band Of Gypsys, 1970)
Joe Satriani: “Jimi’s greatest song, without a doubt, is Machine Gun from the Band Of Gypsys live album, recorded at Filmore East in 1969/70. Let’s just start from the top – it was improvised in front of an audience by a trio, and he’s playing a Fender Stratocaster, a couple of pedals and three Marshall half-stacks. Anyone that’s ever done a live album like that will know how you get butterflies in your stomach and sweaty hands just thinking about the anxiety of recording a live album that way. These days, everyone has an Axe-FX, massive pedalboard and they know they can record it six times, plus options to overdub, retune or retighten it later. We’re talkin’ reality here...
“Then you have to think about the time it happened – there was all this political and social upheaval in the US and around the world. Then, an African American famous for playing with two British guys shows up with two other African Americans as a brand new band. They played a set that was so mindblowing and then came out with one song that rewrote electric guitar for everybody from that moment on. It was like him saying, ‘This is the way you’re going to do it from now on... This is the way it’s going to be!’ But he wasn’t thinking that, it was innocent Jimi trying to make some beautiful music and a political point. He was 27 years old and trying to do something unique.
“In that moment, he showed us how you can play rhythm, riff and melody at the same time, blending with a band and how to tie all these motifs together. Using the whammy bar to connect one section to another, playing around with major and minor in a third generation electric blues context. Even if you forget about the wah-wah, Uni-Vibe and Octavia, what he did was ground-breaking. I
